Doug Mastriano sues student who claims his book is full of inaccuracies

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, a fiery Republican who was away from the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and lost the 2022 gubernatorial election to Josh Shapiro, is suing an Oklahoma student, a Canadian university, and more than a dozen historians, alleging they conspired to tarnish his academic reputation and cost him at least $10 million.

The federal lawsuit was filed in May in Oklahoma against James Gregory, a history student who reported more than 200 alleged crimes in 2022. inaccuracies in Mastriano’s doctoral dissertation for the state senator’s alma mater, the University of New Brunswick in Canada, and the University of Kentucky Press, publisher of Mastriano’s book about the World War I hero. Gregory’s attorneys filed a motion this week to dismiss the lawsuit.

Mastriano wrote his doctoral dissertation on Sergeant Alvin in 2013. York and his success in defeating the German Army at the Battle of Argonne Forest in France in 1918, considered one of the most important American battles ending World War I. The story inspired the 1941 Oscar-winning film, Sergeant York.

Gregory’s own scholarship challenges the narrative that York single-handedly halted the German advance, and argues that history books fail to give credit to the 16 other soldiers who took part in the battle. While conducting research, the University of Oklahoma student came across Mastriano’s book and said he found numerous instances of what he called “academic fraud.”

In the lawsuit, Mastriano claims that Gregory’s complaints to the university and publisher are fraudulent and part of a conspiracy to defame him, cause him economic harm and strip him of his academic privileges, amounting to a “multi-year criminal and antitrust enterprise.”

In addition to the academic integrity complaints Gregory has filed, the complaint alleges that the University of New Brunswick and its history department participated in the actions against him.

Mastriano’s dissertation was placed under embargo, a common practice to give scholars time to use the material to publish a book. But in July 2022, months before the GOP gubernatorial election, the university released the 2013 dissertation, breaking the embargo that Mastriano had sought until 2030.

According to court documents, in a July 2022 letter, the university informed Mastriano that university policy warranted an embargo for four years.

» READ MORE: During the campaign, the controversial Mastriano dissertation was published (from 2022)

Less than a year later, in April 2023, more than a dozen members of Mastriano’s history department circulated a letter saying his public statements “reflect an anti-2SLGBTQQIA+, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, sexist, racist, anti-scientific, violently authoritarian ideology that is antithetical to our values.”

The entire alleged conspiracy against him cost Mastriano at least $10 million in events, books, television shows and other media deals, according to the lawsuit.

“Defendants engaged in criminal activity to deprive Col. Mastriano of intangible property rights in his doctorate, books, and public speaking engagements,” the lawsuit alleges.

Neither Mastriano nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment, nor did the University of New Brunswick.

Gregory told The Inquirer that as a scientist he had an ethical obligation to report alleged problems he found in Mastriano’s work.

“I had no interest or concern for Pennsylvania politics,” Gregory said. “It was purely academic.”

The graduate student is being represented pro bono by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, a Philadelphia-based free speech legal and advocacy organization. His lawyers filed a motion this week to dismiss the case, calling the lawsuit a “strategic anti-public participation lawsuit” aimed at silencing criticism.

According to FIRE attorney Greg Greubel, who represents Gregory, the essence of the competitive academic market is peer criticism among academics, not antitrust as Mastriano claims.

“Science should be subject to peer review, not judicial review,” Greubel said.